The establishment of the Internet has enabled the average individual to retrieve and manipulate vast amounts of information from sources throughout the world. In the beginning, the Internet was primarily used to transfer information in the form of text data. The technology associated with the capture, storage, manipulation and transfer of images over the Internet suffered from a number of limitations including, for example, the expense of electronic imaging equipment and memory, limited computer processing speeds, and the limited data transfer rates associated with available networks.
As technology has progressed, however, many of the limitations described above have been overcome. The average home computer, for example, is now equipped with sufficient processing speed and memory to easily store and manipulate large numbers of images. Data transfer rates have dramatically improved through the use of high speed DSL, cable modems and satellite links. Advances in image capture technologies have also lowered the price of digital cameras and scanners to be competitive with silver halide imaging. The overall result has been an explosion in the use of images to convey information over the Internet.
The use of images to display products in electronic commerce applications is just one example of how image information has become an important factor in communicating information. Early electronic commerce sites included text descriptions of the products being offered for sale. An electronic commerce site selling a book, for example, would provide a written description of the book and might include a link to a review of the book. While the use of text might be sufficient for items such as books, it became apparent that many consumers will not purchase certain items—such as clothing—unless they can see what they are buying. Accordingly, electronic commerce sites began to include an image of the product that could be viewed by the user prior to purchase.
It became further apparent, however, that sales could be increased if consumers could make requests to change the image. For example, the consumer may wish to change the size of the image being displayed, change the color of the item being displayed or may wish to display two items together as a combination. Alternatively, the consumer may wish to add something to the image in order to customize the item being purchased. A typical example of such customization would be allowing the consumer to add a name on the back of a sports jersey.
While it is currently possible to accomplish some of the features recited above using existing technologies, the basic infrastructure of the Internet was not developed to allow for dynamically creating, manipulating and transferring digital images on a per request basis in an efficient manner, wherein the composition, format, presentation, and content of the digital images can be determined by directives presented at the time of the request. Instead, conventional technologies and protocols required that each potentially desired image must be separately created and maintained on a server. As a result, a great deal of resources, both in human development time and storage capability, are currently required to create and maintain images on servers.
As one example, many Internet sites are now available to provide current news and information. Such sites will often utilize headlines to emphasize a particular story. The headlines, however, are not supplied in the form of text data for display, but instead, are actually supplied as an image file that has been created by a designer. The designer chooses a particular font and style for the headline and creates an image file representative thereof. It is this image file that is displayed on the web page. However, each headline must be independently created and stored. Each time a headline is changed, a designer must revise the image files. As will be appreciated, the constant necessity for file revision is a time consuming and expensive process that is required in order to maintain the site.
As a further example, many product marketers utilize personal electronic communications, such as emails, to promote the sale of their products. In order to increase sales, it is desirable to include an image of the product for sale with the personal electronic communication. Preferably, the images attached to the personal electronic communication are customized based on information related to the individual recipient thereof. For example, an individual may visit an automobile showroom and express an interest in a particular model of automobile in a particular color and with particular options. The automobile dealer may later send a communication to the individual with an image attached showing the specific automobile they had viewed at the dealership. However, the large number of permutations of models and options requires a prohibitively large number of individual images to be generated and stored to enable a specific custom image to be provided to the individual.
In view of the above, it would be desirable to provide a system and method for providing a personal electronic communication to which image tags are attached, wherein the image tags are utilized to dynamically create, manipulate and transfer customized images back to the recipient of the personal electronic communication.